America is facing a crisis. As a matter of fact we are in such a constant state of crisis that I should be using the plural crises but that sounds silly and looks improbable. As do the policies which have pushed us to this point.

Taxation that makes us long for the tax rates that started the Revolution.

Attacks on police, on every right guaranteed, not granted, guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.

An internal war on our own energy sector in the name of a mythical man-made global warming.

An administration that fans the flames of racial and social divides for political advantage.

A political class made up of the perpetually re-elected of both parties that sits like a twin headed bird of prey atop a corporatism system rigged to reward the connected and ignore the rest.

How could any of this fail…..to end America’s 240 year old experiment in human freedom? The institutions of our government are broken. However, there is a solution, and it is in the Constitution.

First of all the system was built to provide checks and balances. Each branch, the legislative, the executive, and the judicial were meant to counterbalance each other so that no one branch could usurp the power of the other two.

The Evansville Bar Association in its annual recognition of Constitution Day in 2015 summed it up well;

Although the terms “Separation of Powers” and “Checks and Balances” are not found in the Constitution, these principles are key to its vitality. As George Washington wrote in February of 1788, the two great “pivots upon which the whole machine must move” are: (1) “the general Government is not invested with more Powers than are indispensably necessary to perform the functions of a good Government[,]” and (2) “these Powers are so distributed among the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches, that [the Government] can never be in danger of degenerating into a monarchy or any other despotic or oppressive form, so long as there shall remain any virtue in the body of the People.” As recently as 2011, the Supreme Court affirmed that these principles were “intended, in part, to protect each branch of government from incursion by the others. The structural principles secured by the separation of powers protect the individual as well.”

Congress has abdicated its powers to unelected bureaucrats and the courts have decided that is the order of the day. Generation Opportunity covers this well when they say;

One of the reasons that elections are such so important is because legislative representatives are responsible to create federal laws that impact every one of their constituents.

This is not a task to be taken lightly, which is why voters must dedicate time to research candidates before heading to the voting booth. But few people realize that there are unelected individuals who create regulations that govern everything from what type of light bulb you are allowed to use, as well as how much water your toilet may flush. According to an article published by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), no one is entirely sure how many government agencies actually exist, not even the government knows the exact number.

For instance, in the appendix of the Administrative Conference of the United States, there are 115 agencies listed with a disclaimer saying, “[T]here is no authoritative list of government agencies.”
The federal government has grown so large that no one can even keep track of it anymore. Worse still, each of these agencies are filled with unelected people who take on legislative authority to interpret laws passed by Congress.

Although Congress is prohibited from “delegating” its legislative function to another branch of government, Courts have consistently held that federal agencies may create their own rules as long as an “intelligible” principle can be discerned from the original statute in question.

In other words, if Congress passes a law that regulates a particular industry or action, unelected federal bureaucrats are given almost unchecked power to create whichever rules (or crimes associated with the conduct in question) that they please.

Here’s an example: When Congress passed the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1977, it mandated that certain environmental standards must be imposed on the states, but it hardly clarified what those standards were, or how they were to be enforced.

One of the components of the Act mandated states to establish a permit program that regulates, “new or modified major stationary sources” of air pollution. That seems simple enough, except that Congress never properly defined what qualified as a “stationary source.”

Therefore, the Environmental Protection Agency was left with the task of defining what a “stationary source” meant. Additionally, the original legislation never detailed what the penalty would be for breaking any of the statutes created by the new amendments, leaving it open to interpretation by the EPA.

This predicament led to the 1984 landmark case of Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., where the Supreme Court held that federal agencies have authority to interpret statutes which they are in charge of administering.

This meant that the EPA now had legal authority to determine what would be considered a “stationary source” of air pollution.

Since the Chevron Doctrine applies to all government agencies, the opportunities for abuse are endless. Government is only legitimate when it derives its powers from the consent of the governed. When we give legislative powers to unelected government officials we completely disregard the core American belief of consensual representation.

In other words we elect legislators to make laws and they make general laws like, “We want clean water,” and then they let unelected bureaucrats fill in the blanks with the force of law.

Here is how it works. Everyone wants clean water so the legislators pass their “We want clean water,” law and they come back to their constituents and campaign on “I brought you clean water.” Then the EPA issues a regulation that says you can’t build on wet lands. The EPA gets to decide what wet lands means which consequently gives them De Facto control over any piece of property they say is a wet land. Then when voters complain to their congressional representative, who voted for the law and bragged about it, that they can’t build their house on a lot that is obviously dry the legislator becomes indignant. They tell their constituents, “We’ll just see about this!” Then they have an aide send a strongly worded letter to the EPA that makes no difference whatsoever.

Problem solved. Pat the denizens from fly-over country on the head and leave the matter in the hands of the commiczars who have inherited the rule of what was once a representative republic. This way the hack can get back to his real job of raising money and getting re-elected.

This abdication of responsibility on the part of the legislature is the root cause of our problems because it has led to or facilitated the rise of the imperial presidency wherein many presidents have expanded the power of the executive until today we have an elected monarch who rules by decree unchallenged by Congress and unfettered by the will of the people.

Although the imperial presidency by no means began with the present occupant of the White House, to many Barack Obama has pushed the envelope beyond any discernable constitutional limits and has become the prime example of this phenomenon.

President Obama’s use of executive action to get around congressional gridlock is unparalleled in modern times, some scholars say. But to liberal activists, he’s not going far enough.

Obama, a former constitutional law lecturer, was once skeptical of the aggressive use of presidential power. During the 2008 campaign, he accused President George W. Bush of regularly circumventing Congress. Yet as president, Obama has grown increasingly bold in his own use of executive action, at times to controversial effect.

The president (or his administration) has unilaterally changed elements of the Affordable Care Act (ACA); declared an anti-gay-rights law unconstitutional; lifted the threat of deportation for an entire class of undocumented immigrants; bypassed Senate confirmation of controversial nominees; waived compliance requirements in education law; and altered the work requirements under welfare reform. This month, the Obama administration took the highly unusual step of announcing that it will recognize gay marriages performed in Utah – even though Utah itself says it will not recognize them while the issue is pending in court.

Early in his presidency, Obama also expanded presidential warmaking powers, surveillance of the American public, and extrajudicial drone strikes on alleged terrorists outside the United States, including Americans – going beyond Mr. Bush’s own global war on terror following 9/11. But more recently, he has flexed his executive muscle more on domestic policy.

In the process, Obama’s claims of executive authority have infuriated opponents, while emboldening supporters to demand more on a range of issues, from immigration and gay rights to the minimum wage and Guantánamo Bay prison camp.

To critics, Obama is the ultimate “imperial president,” willfully violating the Constitution to further his goals, having failed to convince Congress of the merits of his arguments. To others, he is exercising legitimate executive authority in the face of an intransigent Congress and in keeping with the practices of past presidents.

It also leads to the tyranny of the courts. Unelected lawyers with life tenure decide what is and what is not constitutional often with the vaguest references to the Constitution itself. Disregarding what are clearly enunciated rights such as the one to keep and bear arms while finding such nonexistent rights such as the right to dispose of unborn children. The Justices of the Supreme Court have abrogated unto themselves unlimited power to turn our Constitution which was supposed to be written in stone into a living letter written in sand. Or as one Chief justice said, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes once said, “We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is.” Or as the website Western Journalism describes it;

Our federal judiciary has become, arguably and disturbingly, an oligarchy. When they rule on the “constitutionality” of an issue, it is assumed to be the final say in whether a vote of Congress or the vote of the people via referendum or initiative is legitimized or annulled. This is not how the Supreme Court and its substrata of appellate courts were intended to operate, nor is it de facto the way it should be.

The federal judiciary, as it has evolved, has unchecked and unlimited power over the nation by either of the other branches–the executive or the legislative–or even the people. Its members are not accountable to the citizenry, since most of their appointments are for life, and they cannot be removed from the bench by a vote of the people they purportedly serve. Their ruminations and the results of their decisions are insular, and they often trump the will of the people with regard to key social issues. Their decisions are presumed to be final, even though they may be at odds with the democratic majority of our citizens.

Herein lies the fundamental problem about the present construct of our federal judiciary as it has evolved since the founding. If, as stated in the 10th Amendment, all “rights and powers” not specifically itemized in the Constitution are held by the people collectively or by the states, what right does a court have to negate the will of the people? As it relates especially to key cultural issues like abortion, public religious displays, and definitions of marriage, should not the final court be the court of public opinion, rather than an oligarchy of judges insulated from, and not accountable to, the citizenry? In most of these cases, state courts have ruled, and appeals are then made to the federal judiciary.

Thomas Jefferson portended this judicial despotism: “To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [good justice is broad jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control.”

These situations exist because Congress abdicates its authority to unelected bureaucrats of the federal nomenclature, it refuses to stand up to the runaway executives and refuses to reign in the Supreme Court.

The first could be accomplished by passing a law rescinding the ability of bureaucracies to issue regulations that have the force of law without congressional approval.

The second could be accomplished as they were with President Nixon, hearings which could lead to impeachment.

And the third is constitutionally provided for in Article 3, Section 2, Clause 2 which states, “In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.” Congress should exercise its power to limit the jurisdiction of the courts. The Constitution provides that Congress is authorized to establish those federal courts subordinate to the Supreme Court and set forth their jurisdiction. Congress also has the power to limit the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and regulate its activities. Accordingly, Congress should exercise this authority to restrain an activist judiciary.

If Congress would step up and be what we elect them to be We the People could once again become more than just an empty phrase from History in a discarded document that once sought to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. If our representatives will represent us instead of themselves and their cronies we would find that the solutions to our broken institutions are in the Constitution.

Share this:

Like this:

Was the whole thing just a venting exercise on the way to more of the same? Some kind of political yoga stress relief for the young Progressives the old Progressives are trying to wrangle into the herd. In 1984 Big Brother ran the resistance. Was Bernie just a shill to gin up excitement for a tread bare hack? Wow! What an exciting turn of events, the new boss looks just like the old boss. How appropriate, when the indoctrinated drones of our government controlled re-education systems stage a revolution it re-affirms the current leadership. I guess the impassioned revolutionary shout from Bernie’s embattled barricades would be, “Vive la Ancien Régime!”

I was raised by people who believed in “My country right or wrong.” I was taught that America never started a war and never lost a war. Reading Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and an honest appraisal of the War of 1812 disabused me of those two notions. While the jingoist attitude of blind acceptance and unreflective loyalty and unquestioning support for a sacred homeland are not descriptive of my life I am devoted to the enlightenment ideas enshrined in the Constitution.

I am a vocal proponent of the nation founded on the proposition that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. I am a proud supporter of the federal republic founded in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.

I am an avowed non-interventionist capitalist who believes passionately in individual liberty, personal freedom, and economic opportunity. I was a Republican all my life, working my first campaign ringing door bells for Nixon in 1960, supporting Goldwater, Reagan for Governor and then for president in 1976, 1980, and 84.

George H.W. Bush with his compassionate conservatism and new world order turned me off. Bob “It’s my Turn” Dole discouraged me and after the Contract with America Congress veered off the rails and started pushing bigger government and crony capitalism I quit the party and became an independent. George the Second pushed me over the edge. I could no longer consider myself a Conservative because there was nothing left to conserve, so I began to style myself as a radical who believes in a return to limited government, individual liberty, personal freedom, and economic opportunity.

The Clinton interlude between the Bush bookends and the Obamanation I have viewed as akin to the Vichy regime in France during WW II. They were and are mere figureheads for the multinational corporations and international organizations to which they surrendered our independence doing their best to institutionalize the Corporate State.

I have long believed and advocated for the following policies.

Moratoriums on all immigration until those who are already here are assimilated. Initiate policies which will induce those who are here illegally to self-deport. These policies would include a cut off of public assistance and an E-verify law with teeth meaning significant fines for people who employ illegals and incarceration for those who have multiple offenses. In foreign policy, resigning as the policeman of the world by ending our far-flung system of bases in more than a hundred countries, leaving Europe and Korea to defend themselves, bringing our troops home, securing the border and our defenses with the strongest military in the world and stop intervening in places that are not in our national interest.

Yes, I know that these proposals will be called racist, xenophobic and anti-American by the open borders clique; however, to quote Ronaldus Magnus, “A nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation.” They will also be opposed by the neo-con hawks as isolationist. I stand with Ron Paul when he says, “The Founders and all the early presidents argued the case for non-intervention overseas, with the precise goals of avoiding entangling alliances and not involving our people in foreign wars unrelated to our security.”

Yes, I know tariffs will make prices rise for many goods. However, I also know that we need to rebuild our industrial base if we are to remain an independent nation capable of providing jobs for our people that support a middleclass lifestyle and a nation that can provide for its own defense.

Yes, I know that a non-interventionist resignation from being the policeman of the world is portrayed as a retreat and as abdicating our leadership of the world. I call it jettisoning the empire to save the republic.

These positions have been heretical within the globalist interventionist neo-con Republican Party of Bush, McCain, Krauthammer, and the National Review. However, today is a new day and perhaps there is a chance to right the Ship of State and resurrect the greatest experiment in human freedom in History before we plunge into the dustbin of History as another centralized collectivist utopia that will inevitably end up a dystopian nightmare.

Now we face a choice of historic proportions. Do we want Hillary “The Nail in Our Coffin” Clinton to complete the transfer of American sovereignty to international globalist cabals such as the WTO and the UN? Or are we willing to vote for the first candidate since Reagan with the courage to even say, “America First”?

I am still an independent. I will not rejoin the Republican Party unless and until it has been purged of its globalist leadership. However, I have waited my entire life to hear a politician say what The Donald said in his speech of June 28, 2016 “Declaring America’s Economic Independence.” In this speech he outlines a program I can endorse 100%.

Mr. Trump said in that speech,

This wave of globalization has wiped out our middle class.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We can turn it all around – and we can turn it around fast.

But if we’re going to deliver real change, we’re going to have to reject the campaign of fear and intimidation being pushed by powerful corporations, media elites, and political dynasties.

The people who rigged the system for their benefit will do anything – and say anything – to keep things exactly as they are.

The people who rigged the system are supporting Hillary Clinton because they know as long as she is in charge nothing will ever change.

The inner cities will remain poor.

The factories will remain closed.

The borders will remain open.

The special interests will remain firmly in control.

Hillary Clinton and her friends in global finance want to scare America into thinking small – and they want to scare the American people out of voting for a better future.

My campaign has the opposite message.

I want you to imagine how much better your life can be if we start believing in America again.

I want you to imagine how much better our future can be if we declare independence from the elites who’ve led us to one financial and foreign policy disaster one after another.

This is the message I have been waiting for all my life. This message is clear and direct. Trump often speaks off the top of his head. He speaks his mind and often says things which offend the politically correct media and by extension those who slavishly believe and follow the Progressive’s multi-mouthed Pravda. However this speech was scripted. He used a teleprompter to deliver it and its text has been released as an official campaign document.

I know that in the divided America of the 21st century many who have followed the History of the Future for years will be angry with what I have to say next. Some may be surprised and some may be disappointed. However I have to do what I believe is the best for my country. Therefore, I have decided to endorse and support Donald Trump. Some may say you can’t believe what he says. A man I greatly respect says, “All politicians lie. The good ones do it convincingly.” That may be true.

Just as Eve did not sin because she believed the serpent and just as if you donate to a charity that you honestly believe will do good and they waste the money that is not your responsibility that is on them. I believe Donald Trump. I believe he honestly wants to make America great again, and I am 100% for that.

While I encourage everyone to read the entire speech or listen to it on YouTube and it is too long to include verbatim in this article I want to end by sharing his trade program for rebuilding America.

A Trump Administration will change our failed trade policy – quickly

Here are 7 steps I would pursue right away to bring back our jobs.

One: I am going to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which has not yet been ratified.

Two: I’m going to appoint the toughest and smartest trade negotiators to fight on behalf of American workers.

Three: I’m going to direct the Secretary of Commerce to identify every violation of trade agreements a foreign country is currently using to harm our workers. I will then direct all appropriate agencies to use every tool under American and international law to end these abuses.

Four: I’m going tell our NAFTA partners that I intend to immediately renegotiate the terms of that agreement to get a better deal for our workers. And I don’t mean just a little bit better, I mean a lot better. If they do not agree to a renegotiation, then I will submit notice under Article 2205 of the NAFTA agreement that America intends to withdraw from the deal.

Five: I am going to instruct my Treasury Secretary to label China a currency manipulator. Any country that devalues their currency in order to take advantage of the United States will be met with sharply

Six: I am going to instruct the U.S. Trade Representative to bring trade cases against China, both in this country and at the WTO. China’s unfair subsidy behavior is prohibited by the terms of its entrance to the WTO, and I intend to enforce those rules.

Seven: If China does not stop its illegal activities, including its theft of American trade secrets, I will use every lawful presidential power to remedy trade disputes, including the application of tariffs consistent with Section 201 and 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 and Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.

President Reagan deployed similar trade measures when motorcycle and semiconductor imports threatened U.S. industry. His tariff on Japanese motorcycles was 45% and his tariff to shield America’s semiconductor industry was 100%.

Hillary Clinton, and her campaign of fear, will try to spread the lie that these actions will start a trade war. She has it completely backwards.

Hillary Clinton unleashed a trade war against the American worker when she supported one terrible trade deal after another – from NAFTA to China to South Korea.

A Trump Administration will end that war by getting a fair deal for the American people.

The era of economic surrender will finally be over.

A new era of prosperity will finally begin.

America will be independent once more.

Under a Trump Presidency, the American worker will finally have a President who will protect them and fight for them.

We will stand up to trade cheating anywhere and everywhere it threatens an American job.

We will make America the best place in the world to start a business, hire workers, and open a factory.

This includes massive tax reform to lift the crushing burdens on American workers and businesses.

We will also get rid of wasteful rules and regulations which are destroying our job creation capacity.

Many people think that these regulations are an even greater impediment than the fact that we are one of the highest taxed nations in the world.

We are also going to fully capture America’s tremendous energy capacity. This will create vast profits for our workers and begin reducing our deficit. Hillary Clinton wants to shut down energy production and shut down the mines.

A Trump Administration will also ensure that we start using American steel for American infrastructure.

Just like the American steel from Pennsylvania that built the Empire State building.

It will be American steel that will fortify American’s crumbling bridges.

It will be American steel that sends our skyscrapers soaring into the sky.

It will be American steel that rebuilds our inner cities.

It will be American hands that remake this country, and it will be American energy – mined from American resources – that powers this country.

It will be American workers who are hired to do the job.

We are going to put American-produced steel back into the backbone of our country. This alone will create massive numbers of jobs.

On trade, on immigration, on foreign policy, we are going to put America First again.

We are going to make America wealthy again.

We are going to reject Hillary Clinton’s politics of fear, futility, and incompetence.

We are going to embrace the possibilities of change.

It is time to believe in the future.

It is time to believe in each other.

It is time to Believe In America.

This Is How We Are Going To Make America Great Again – For All Americans.

We Are Going To Make America Great Again For Everyone – Greater Than Ever Before.

I don’t know about anyone else but that is a program I can believe in and one that I believe will lead to a rebirth of the American economy.

Hopefully I won’t end up living out the words spoken by a character in a book I wrote many years ago who when asked why he supported a disreputable candidate running for president who was a plain-speaking non-politician and the richest man in the world said, “I know he’s a liar but I like what he says.”

Recently I spent some time with a person I respect highly, who is very intelligent, and who has thought about and reached conclusions concerning America’s Constitution. This person, who is representative of many others, believes that a document written hundreds of years ago is meaningless in today’s America. He cited the fact that many of the Framers were slave owners, they could not have imagined a nation of hundreds of millions, they could not foresee the technologically rich environment we call home, or the diverse population that now constitutes the body politic.

None of the things cited above can be refuted because they are all true.

First of all, what is a constitution? A constitution organizes, distributes and regulates the power of the state. A constitution sets out the structure of the state, the major state institutions, and the principles governing their relations with each other and with the state’s citizens.

So, why do we have a written Constitution, and does this written Constitution still matter?

When the American Revolutionaries broke free from Great Britain they wanted to build their new nation on a solid foundation. They most assuredly did not want what they had just rebelled against, a monarchy or an unlimited government.

Did the British have a constitution? In the Eighteenth Century just as it is now Britain is unusual in that it has an ‘unwritten’ constitution: unlike the great majority of countries there is no single legal document which sets out in one place the fundamental laws outlining how the state works. Britain’s lack of a ‘written’ constitution can be explained by its history. In other countries, many of whom have experienced revolution or regime change, it has been necessary to start from scratch or begin from first principles, constructing new state institutions and defining in detail their relations with each other and their citizens. By contrast, the British Constitution has evolved over a long period of time, reflecting the relative stability of the British polity. It has never been thought necessary to consolidate the basic building blocks of this order in Britain. What Britain has instead is an accumulation of various statutes, conventions, judicial decisions and treaties which collectively can be referred to as the British Constitution. It is thus more accurate to refer to Britain’s constitution as an ‘uncodified’ constitution, rather than an ‘unwritten’ one.

The British Constitution can be summed up in eight words: What the monarch in Parliament enacts is law. This means that Parliament, using the power of the Crown, enacts law which no other body can challenge. Parliamentary sovereignty is commonly regarded as the defining principle of the British Constitution. This is the ultimate lawmaking power vested in a democratically elected Parliament to create or abolish any law. Other core principles of the British Constitution are often thought to include the rule of law, the separation of government into executive, legislative, and judicial branches, and the existence of a unitary state, meaning ultimate power is held by ‘the center’ – the sovereign Westminster Parliament. In other words there is neither check upon nor balance to the power of the government. The entire shape, form, and substance of the government can change at any time by a simple majority vote of Parliament. To sum up: the British Constitution is a living document.

This is what caused the revolution. If you look at the list of particulars that are in the overlooked or forgotten part of the Declaration of Independence you see that many of these individual charges against the Monarch as the representation of the government are changes made by arbitrary and unilateral acts of Parliament.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time (sic) exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured (sic) to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring (sic) Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat (sic) the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured (sic) to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

The colonists tried to follow the procedures as they knew them to find relief within the system. But they were ignored and baffled as the system kept changing. They describe their experience dealing with the shifting sands of their revered living document in the following words.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish (sic) brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

It was because of this failed effort to deal with a system that has no solid structure, a system that can change at the will of a simple majority that the Framers were determined to set our new nation on the solid rock of a written constitution. What did the Founders and Framers have to say?

George Washington said, “The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the Constitution, which at any time exists, ‘till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. … If in the opinion of the people the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this in one instance may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.”

Thomas Jefferson said, “Our peculiar security is in possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction. … If it is, then we have no Constitution.”

James Madison said, “Can it be of less consequence that the meaning of a Constitution should be fixed and known, than a meaning of a law should be so?”

This is what we were founded upon and this is the philosophical underpinning for the originalist view of the constitution as championed by the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

What do the leading lights of the living document side of the argument have to say?

Woodrow Wilson said, “Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice. Society is a living organism and must obey the laws of life, not of mechanics; it must develop. All that progressives ask or desire is permission—in an era when ‘development,’ ‘evolution,’ is the scientific word—to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine.”

FDR said, “The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.”

Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter said, “The words of the Constitution … are so unrestricted by their intrinsic meaning or by their history or by tradition or by prior decisions that they leave the individual Justice free, if indeed they do not compel him, to gather meaning not from reading the Constitution but from reading life.”

Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall said, “I cannot accept this invitation [to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution], for I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever ‘fixed’ at the Philadelphia Convention … To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start.”

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia summed up the end result of more than a century of Progressive constitutional stretching. “If we’re picking people to draw out of their own conscience and experience a ‘new’ Constitution, we should not look principally for good lawyers. We should look to people who agree with us. When we are in that mode, you realize we have rendered the Constitution useless.”

Or to put it another way the Progressive’s living document has gone a long way to changing the Constitution from something carved in stone to a mirage written in the sand. So why do we have a written constitution? In my opinion we need a written constitution so that the government cannot change the social contract with the wave of its hand or the passage of thousand page bills no one even reads.

So why do we have a written constitution?

To keep demagogues and tyrants from arbitrarily changing the rules by which we live. If you think this has worked see my book The Constitution Failed. As a professor of Political Science and as the Director of one of the largest Political Science Departments at any university I have long advocated that the study of the Constitution should be moved from Political Science to History because it has become merely an historical document and now has little to do with how our country is administered by the political class.

Does it still matter? Only if the citizens of this nation have the fortitude to rise up and demand that it matters.

Share this:

Like this:

Having been raised in Chicago I knew from the begging of awareness that it may say Justice on the outside of the court house there isn’t any on the inside. It all comes down to who you are and who you know.

There recent whitewash of Hillary’s outrageous conduct concerning her emails while secretary of State has finally taken the lid off this can of worms for good. We can no longer pretend we are a nation ruled by law. John Adams may have said we are” A government of laws, and not of men.” And that may have been the aim of the Founders but it is obvious to all but the willfully blind and Democrats that this is no longer true in America.